Pensions, of course, aren’t the sole cause of Kodak’s slide into bankruptcy. You can assign the rise of virtually zero-cost, smartphone-enabled digital photo sharing much of the blame for that.

But today’s transaction suggests that there’s considerable value to be gained from managing Kodak’s film and paper photo business, and related document imaging operations, for the long term. Otherwise why would the U.K. pension trusts have accepted the assets as payment for its claim against the company? And that value, whatever it is, will be claimed by retirees.

“The businesses that we are acquiring will deliver long-term cash flows to support the plan’s obligations,” the U.K. pension funds’ chairman, Steven Ross, says in a Kodak statement this morning. “The financial stability that KPP will provide for the Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging businesses will be beneficial to those businesses’ employees, customers and partners.”

The Kodak deal makes explicit what is often less clear at companies that aren’t undergoing a bankruptcy restructuring: To a great extent, employees at companies with traditional, defined benefit pension plans are working to fund those plans. Investments in new technology or new, more productive manufacturing, or payouts to shareholders, get whatever is left.